Social construction of justice in work organisations

Studies done recently have shown that social action and social context has significant impact on experiences of justice in work organisations. This means that same action of justice can be judged differently in different social contexts. Studies have also shown that in work organisation, its representatives views about justice reflects the opinions of the whole work group. In other words, experience of justice is socially constructed and collective. This means that understanding justice requires knowledge about organisations' culture and structure.

The study consists of two stages: qualitative questionnaire and formal network-study already done in 98 work groups, and case-study which will be done in one work organisation. With network analysis the communication, advice and emotional support structures of the work groups are highlighted. Most interesting questions are those considering connection between experiences about justice and network structure: if experiences about justice are similar between work group members, what does the networks look like? The case-study will focus more on organisation culture aspect: what features in organisation culture cherish fairness? In the presentation some theoretical background and preliminary results of the quantitative work group -network study will be introduced.